Time magazine reports that President Trump met secretly with Elon Musk in December 2025, roughly a month before U.S. forces invaded Venezuela and detained Nicolás Maduro. During this discussion, Trump asked the Grok chatbot how the Venezuelan public would react to capturing their leader. Sources indicate Trump spent hours consulting the system, which previously advised him on military strikes against drug trafficking boats in September. Grok responded by telling Trump that Maduro was a deeply unpopular dictator and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall.
When celebrations indeed occurred after the invasion on January 3, Trump reportedly came away thinking Grok was ingenious. This interaction suggests why the Pentagon’s head of AI later stated that the military used Gov Grok to deploy and strike targets during the Iran War. While Grok is not the only AI model serving the Department of Defense, OpenAI also has an agreement and Anthropic has been in a back-and-forth over how its models can be used for military intelligence and in modern warfare, Grok may become an even bigger favorite under this administration. Earlier this week, the Pentagon announced that Musk and Anduril’s Palmer Luckey have been tapped to co-lead a study about how advanced technology is, and can be, used in battlefields.
- Meeting occurred seven months after Musk left the Department of Government Efficiency
- Atlantic reported people were asking Grok about the political climate in Venezuela
- Study on battlefield technology co-led by Musk and Luckey announced earlier this week
